Team meets to develop EU forestry project in South America

Quito, Ecuador, November 2012 – Delegates from WWF Colombia, IUCN South America, and TRAFFIC met this November to develop implementation plans for an EU-funded forestry project in South America.

The “Supporting the implementation of the EU FLEGT Action Plan in South America” project will assist in the implementation of the EU Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan, which aims to ensure that only legally harvested timber is imported into the EU.

The EU FLEGT Action Plan is the EU’s response to the global issue of illegal timber trade. It provides for a number of measures to exclude illegal timber from markets, to improve the supply of legal timber and to increase the demand for responsible wood products.

Delegates met to discuss implementation of the joint TRAFFIC-IUCN-WWF forestry project in the four South American focal countries: Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

Present were technical representatives from Europe and South America, including project co-ordinators for each of the focal countries as well as administrative staff.

The project team established mechanisms to ensure knowledge of the activities under development in each of the countries in Europe and South America is widely shared both internally and externally to relevant audiences as well as examining a number of opportunities for project development in each of the target countries.

“Now comes the hard work of ensuring those activities timetabled to be completed by the end of 2012 are finished in time, but we are confident the strong and enthusiastic team can meet these challenges,” said Blady Nhaydú Bohórquez, the Regional Project Co-ordinator for South America.

“The team encourages all those with an interest in the timber trade from South America to engage with us.”

An EU FLEGT meeting will take place next year in Brussels, and the project team will take the opportunity to review progress in implementing their plans.